Lucciole #5 - Viola Carofalo

A newsletter by Voice Over

In this issue, we tell you another story of political commitment, activism, and active participation against exploitation and various forms of oppression. But before introducing this month’s featured activist, let's start with the definitions of some central concepts: class struggle and ruling classes.

Class struggle is a key concept in Marxist theory, describing the conflict of interests between different social classes, particularly between workers and owners of the means of production. This dynamic remains relevant in modern societies due to persistent economic and power inequalities.

The ruling classes typically include those who possess economic resources and political control, such as large entrepreneurs, industrialists, top executives, and their political allies, broadly representing the economic and industrial elites who influence policies to their advantage.

Why is it still important to talk about class struggle?

Simply because class struggle exists, and today it is mainly driven by the hegemonic ruling classes. Economic inequalities continue to grow, with wealth and power becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small elite.

Numerous reports and studies show how this concentration of corporate and monopolistic power globally exacerbates inequality, undermines workers' rights, privatizes states, fuels climate collapse, and evades taxes, thereby depriving citizens of essential services and rights. 

Since 2020, the world's five richest men have doubled their fortunes. In the same period, nearly five billion people have become poorer. Seven of the world's ten largest companies have either a billionaire CEO or a billionaire as the principal shareholder. 

In Italy, according to a joint study by the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna di Pisa and the University of Milan-Bicocca, published by the Journal of the European Economic Association, “the richest 1% of the country holds about 12% of national income, averaging €310,000 per year, mainly from financial income, corporate profits, and self-employment, largely derived from corporate managerial roles.” Specifically, the 50,000 Italians who make up the richest 0.1% hold 4.5% of national income with average earnings exceeding one million euros annually, a figure the poorest 50% could achieve only by saving their entire income for 76 years.” In summary, the ruling classes continue to amass wealth while exercising disproportionate influence over politics and the economy, shaping laws and regulations to their advantage. This power imbalance perpetuates conditions of injustice and fuels class tensions.

Perhaps a more pertinent question is whether the exploited and oppressed want to participate in this struggle or continue to endure it? And most importantly, how can we bring class struggle back to the forefront of public debate?

There is no formula, Viola Carofalo, the protagonist of this newsletter, warns us immediately. In fact, all tools—from street protests to Instagram posts, from mutual aid to voting—can be useful if approached pragmatically. However, it is necessary to reclaim words, narratives, and practices, returning to meeting, knowing, and activating at the local level, rebuilding a class identity among the exploited and oppressed.

This is her voice. Thank you for being with us.

Happy reading! The Voice Over Team

The voice of this issue

Viola Carofalo has always been an activist in the radical left galaxy and is actively involved in the world of social centers. Since 2005, she has been part of the political collective Ex OPG Je so' pazzo in Naples and was the spokesperson for the political movement Potere al Popolo from its foundation in 2017 until 2021. Today, she teaches Moral Philosophy at the University of Naples L'Orientale. You can also listen to her interview on the Voice Over Foundation’s Instagram page.

The voice of Viola Carofalo

"When they oppress us, take away our rights, discriminate against us, they are engaging in class struggle, so class struggle exists and is being waged by the ruling classes. The issue is whether we want to participate in this struggle as the disadvantaged class".

She speaks quickly, almost without pauses, but carefully chooses each word, starting with the first-person plural: “we.” A “we” that Viola Carofalo has known since she was a teenager when, at thirteen, she began participating in various associative and extra-parliamentary movements in Naples, her city, leading to her first electoral experience at 37 with Potere al Popolo. Her political activism is indissolubly linked to Ex OPG Je so' pazzo, a community space for mutual aid and resistance against all forms of exploitation and oppression, transformed from a former conventual structure, the Judicial Psychiatric Hospital, into one of the city’s most significant political experiences.

“There is no purity ranking among the tools for struggle and mobilization. Mutual aid is a tool, demonstrations are another, and social media is yet another, but we should not be moralistic. We must be pragmatic”, she says bluntly. “Class struggle exists, and the ruling classes are waging it against us dispossessed. The issue is whether we want to participate as the disadvantaged class. And if we do, all effective tools must be used.”

But alongside the tools, physical meeting spaces on the ground are also necessary, she emphasizes. “I do not demonize the internet; it is a resource, but I cannot imagine organized politics without a physical or territorial reference, made of headquarters, places where people can meet, know each other, organize, and have a direct intervention in the nearest territory”, she explains.

For Carofalo, indeed, the physical place helps solidify the level of organization of demonstrations. It prevents starting over from scratch each time. She cites with admiration the mobilizations for the liberation of Palestine, those in the logistics sector or the ex-GKN factory, occupied by workers after a speculative maneuver by the British multinational. Still, she wonders, “what comes next? How can we ensure that the mobilizations and the words reclaimed or reinvented during these struggles do not dissipate?”

Hence the third ingredient: the recovery and creation of a new language, ideas, and narratives to tell the story of class struggle, rediscovering identity. “I think it is important to bring politics back to this dual dimension and build a class identity for the exploited and oppressed, changing the way we see the world. We need to look at things and ask ourselves, ‘whose side am I on? Where are my people? Who are my people? It is very difficult to understand because this implies analyzing what is most important to me. Are my people those who resemble me? Or those who speak my language? Or those who share gender battles? For me, ‘my people’ are the broad field of the oppressed and the exploited”.

Tools, practices, physical spaces, and narratives. It is not a perfect recipe and never will be, but these are elements Carofalo tries to stitch together like a colorful patchwork made of different fabrics. However, the thread that holds these pieces of cloth together is work, the most important and most neglected issue.

“If you don't have minimum rights, how can you think of mobilizing on other issues? I do not want to diminish other struggles related to symbolic, cultural, or ecological representation, but if I cannot eat, how can I be an autonomous subject? This material element is crucial for everyone, for racialized subjects, for those discriminated against based on gender, for the poor. So, work and the fight for a minimum wage are the decisive battles to bring back to the center. I think of my city, which is undergoing a process of gentrification and touristification that is evicting us from the urban center. For me, this is not an opportunity for redemption; it is impoverishment of a part of the city. Then another part of the city and the world, because often there are multinational companies behind it, gets richer. So, it is necessary to ask, ‘where does all this wealth go? Do people have contracts? Are they paid fairly?’ Therefore, talking about work means talking about a thousand other things, about gentrification, the environment, and gender”.

Perhaps Viola Carofalo is right when she says there is no recipe, but maybe we already have some of the right ingredients. And work is one of them. 

Explore with us

If you want to learn more about capitalism, class struggle, and universal income, we recommend reading the articles Alessandro Sahebi has written for our online magazine. In particular, the article on universal basic income, the one on the super-rich, Alessandro’s interview with Sarath Davala, Indian sociologist and president of the Basic Income Earth Network, and thein-depth piece on inequality, a real tax on the mind.

Other useful resources

To read

“Non è lavoro, è sfruttamento” by Marta Fana 

“Le grandi dimissioni” by Francesca Coin 

“Basta salari da fame!” by Marta Fana 

“Manifesto per il reddito di base” by Federico Chicchi and Emanuele Leonardi 

To watch

“E tu come stai?” on the struggle of ex-GKN workers 

“Sorry we missed you” by Ken Loach 

“The old oak” by Ken Loach

See you next time!